Scars
by DeepBlueSomewhere
Summary: Five times that James T. Kirk's scars cost him something, and one time that they gave him something instead. Warnings for triggery material.  One-Shot
1. Chapter 1

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**Scars**

_by DeepBlueSomewhere_

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_Summary: _Five times that James T. Kirk's scars cost him something, and one time that they gave him something instead. Warnings for triggery material. (One-Shot)

_Author's Note:_ This can be seen as independent of my other stories, as I never mentioned this when Jim tells Leonard all in _Perfect _Strangers, but it can also be read in as part of that little mini-verse we have going. It's up to you.

Please see the next chapter for a very long and extended author's note that includes an update on writing/story plans as well as a detailed description of this one shot and the inspiration behind it. I appreciate you all so very much.

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**_(Five)_**

Jim was nine the first time he cut himself, and he had no idea what he was doing.

He used an odd little pocket-knife he'd found in a box marked "George" in an extremely dusty corner of the attic, and he was pretty sure that if his mother ever found out he had it she would beat the crap out of him. Figuratively speaking, of course: Winona Kirk had never raised a hand against her youngest, though her new husband, Frank, did not have the same reservations.

It was late afternoon on a too-warm summer weekend, and his brother Sam had just packed his bags and left the house without a word. Without asking, Jim knew he was never going to come back.

The boy sat on the roof in the deepening dusk with the hum of insects all around and a small, but mercifully cool breeze sweeping across the fields to stir his mussed hair just slightly. Frank had been yelling for him earlier, but the big man had given up about an hour ago and retreated into the house with a slam of the screen door.

Jim dragged the stolen knife slowly, almost lazily over his skin just above his knee, feeling too hollow and angry to really care that it was a stupid thing to do. The knife blade was dull and a little rusty from years of disuse and storage. He didn't think it would actually break the skin. But it did.

He hissed, more in surprise than pain, when he felt the strange sting of metal sliding through flesh. He dropped the knife into his lap and pressed his palm over the rapidly-welling trickle of blood. Ironically, the only real thought running through his mind was that if Frank had to take him to the hospital for this, Jim was dead. Not just a disapproving-look and cold-shoulder kind of dead, but more like a month's-worth-of-chores and heavy-hand-across-the-face kind of dead.

It didn't really start stinging until he pressed his hand against it, so he quickly abandoned that tactic. He pulled his fingers away dripping in the bright red substance, and he studied it in fascination. The blood was an unfamiliar sight and texture, and it intrigued him. The cut itself, upon closer inspection, was shallow and harmless. But it thrilled him, and he couldn't have said why, but it filled up a little pocket of emptiness in his soul. For some reason, it felt like he was rebelling.

He pressed the blade into the pre-existing wound and clenched his jaw as he dragged the steel through damaged flesh, deepening the cut.

He let the blood dry as it was, not bothering to clean it away or staunch the flow, and it was deep night before he felt safe to climb down and head up to his bedroom. His shorts had been inherited from Sam and were consequentially large on him. The hem fell well past his knee, effectively hiding the damage.

He wasn't sure why the wound made him feel better. He knew only that he felt alert and alive and truly triumphant, like he had some kind of secret weapon when he made a bold reappearance in the house after his vanishing act. He felt nothing at all when Frank boxed his ears and exiled him to his room with a growling stomach.

The next day, Daniel and his brothers from the next farm over came by in their dad's pickup to ask him to go to the lake with them.

Jim said no, and offered no explanation, but he watched them leave with a heavy heart.

He felt the first traces of regret and maybe a little apprehension as the dust cloud drifted into nothingness on the horizon, because this was the kind of thing he hadn't considered the night before. If he really wanted to keep the wound—still crusted with dried blood he hadn't bothered to clean yet—a secret from others, than he was going to have to avoid situations like going to the swimming hole with his friends. There was no way they'd miss it, and he was only nine, but he still knew that floundering around in the dirty water with an open wound was a recipe for infection.

This was the first time that he realized that his scars came with a price.

_**(Four)**_

He still remembered the look on her face when she found out.

Winona—he wasn't sure when he had stopped referring to her as 'Mother'—had been off-planet for nearly eight months. Since Sam had left, she'd started staying away for longer and longer each trip, finding excuses to stay under the idea that "Starfleet needs me, Frank."

This was to Jim as "clearly, _you_ _don't_ need me."

He took the hint.

Jim became self-sustaining, the sun in his own little orbit, because he absolutely refused to orbit around Frank. They repelled one another like magnets turned the wrong way, and this co-existence became the closest thing either of them could ever find to peace. On the few occasions when they were ever forced by absolutely necessity to share the same space... well, it wasn't pretty, and it was always violent. The latter was unfailingly Jim's fault.

Having Winona at home became the most harrowing of those occasions. Jim and Frank cleaned up the house, usually their own respective parts of it, and put on their best behavior and a hot meal. They pretended to be a family for an hour or two for that first night, though it was an attempt that generally devolved into screaming fights and slamming doors, and then Winona would spend time individually with "both of her boys" for the rest of her leave. That always meant six days with Frank and one with Jim. This was an agonizing day for both of them.

She was supposed to be gone for another two weeks, leaving Jim and Frank plenty of time to tend to their respective messes and paste their sad little facsimile of decency back together. It meant Jim had two weeks to heal up the bruises and Frank had two weeks to wash the stench of liquor off his breath.

It mean two weeks of calm before the storm.

But it was early now, and the door creaked open. Jim's head came up from his book, and he couldn't imagine who it would be because Frank never came into his room and no-one else cared enough to come and visit him.

He thought his heart stopped beating.

The smile on his mother's face, tired and just a little forced, faltered and fell away. Jim's racing mind likened it absently to peeling paint, one coat thrown on on top of another until the whole facade crumbled away under the weight to reveal what had once been beneath.

It took Jim a beat too long to understand what this new expression meant.

"Mom." He choked out, because he didn't know what else to say. She was staring at his arms, bare and uncovered in the safety of his own sanctuary, and he knew he'd been too late.

He was pulling on his sweater as he stood quickly, trying to hide, but she had already seen.

Winona Kirk, a shell of the woman she had once been, stepped forward and did not allow Jim to fight as she grasped his wrist and pushed up the sleeve of his favorite old sweater, one he'd won from a kid at school. He'd been dared to do a backflip off the basketball hoop without killing himself. He'd sprained his ankle, but he'd lived. The bet had involved winning everything the other was wearing, but Jim had settled for just the sweater, because it had a graphic on the back mocking Starfleet and that had caught his fancy at the time.

This was the memory he was reliving now, detached and floating absently through his own headspace, because he couldn't really reconcile what was happening. His mother was just standing there, staring down at the now-faded cuts with an expression he couldn't read. He'd long ago moved on from the experimental scratches. The cuts were evenly-spaced and deliberate now, made with practiced composition and precision.

"Mom?" He asked again, and he usually didn't sound this young. He sounded his age: fourteen and desperately alone.

She finally looked up at him, and the expression in her eyes was now as clear as day.

Disapproval. Reproachfulness. Disappointment. The last was the hardest pill to swallow, because it was a sentiment he'd always known was lurking there, just on the tip of her tongue, at the forefront of her mind. The difference was that she wasn't hiding it now.

Before his eyes, Winona Kirk, the woman who had teetered so long on the brink between mother to a hurting son and widow to famous captain, pulled away completely. Walls came down and distance came between them, and Jim knew instinctively that he'd just lost her, too.

She released his wrist, and he never thought he would miss her touch like he did.

"Frank's starting on dinner." She said too softly, her voice too composed and _normal_. "Join us when you're ready?"

It wasn't a question, and his automatic nod wasn't an answer, but they both pretended. She pasted that smile back on, and left.

Jim turned off the lights, sank back down into the pile of pillows at the head of his bed, and scratched at the healing scars on his arms until blood came flowing from them once more, familiar and warm. He had contemplated death before, when the knife sat gleaming with temptation in his palm. Now, he longed for it. But he didn't have death. He had these scars; this maddeningly beautiful and terrifying addiction.

Jim's scars had cost him his mother.

_**(Three)**_

Jim was sixteen the first time Frank tried to put him in the hospital.

Technically, if you really got down to the nitty gritty details of the encounter, it was probably all Jim's fault. He was a natural-born fuse. All he had to do was touch someone and light a spark, and all hell broke loose on cue. But that was beside the point, really. He pushed Frank like tapping too many buttons on a computer console. Sooner or later, something was going to break, spark, or blow up in your face.

It was a deceptively beautiful day on the farm. Birds were singing, the crops looked promising and fresh in the crisp spring air, and the pleasant breeze played tug-of-war with the cheery sun as the temperature teetered on just the right side of warm.

Frank's boot connected with Jim's rib with an audible 'crack', and the orange cat perched on the open windowsill darted away, spooked by the noise.

Jim coughed out a mouthful of blood because he'd bitten his tongue, but he followed with a mocking laugh. At least, it was meant to be mocking. Right now it sounded mostly pathetic. He wasn't sure why he was still pushing: he'd gotten the reaction he'd wanted. But he couldn't stop. He wanted to break him, because if he could do that, a small part of Jim thought maybe then he would understand what it felt like.

"That the bes'y'got?" He slurred through the pain, grinning through blood-stained teeth at the huge man who leaned down to haul the scrawny boy up by the collar of his shirt.

"Fuckin' brat..." Frank sneered down, and Jim felt a sick sense of satisfaction to realize that the bigger man was bleeding from a possibly broken nose, too. Jim had thrown the first blow, after all. It had turned out to be a lucky one.

"Not lookin' so hot." Jim laughed again, begging for the pain to follow. "I don't think anyone's gonna recogni—"

A closed fist connected with his jaw, and the force was too much for Frank to hold on to him. Jim slammed backwards, his head making contact with the coffee table as he landed on the ground.

"Freakin pussy." Jim taunted in what he thought was the general direction of his stepfather; he couldn't tell anymore because the edges of his vision were going dark and the shapes he could see were blurry and undefined. "You couldn't win against a girl."

"Good thing it's just you, then." Frank's next blow was weak, and he was sounding bored with Jim, and that was something the teen wouldn't allow.

"Bet you can't even get it up anymore, with all that drinking," Jim spat, too lethargic to smile again. "I guess that's why she never comes home any—"

Glass exploded across Jim's temple, and he only realized it had been glass when he came to his senses some time later to find the shards embedded in his flesh.

He listened for Frank moving about the house but heard nothing, and only then did he dare try to sit up. His ribs protested immediately, and he gasped as he pressed back into the dirty carpet. His head spun wildly and he had the sudden, illogical fear that if he threw up and wasn't able to move, he would just choke himself to death on his own vomit. And that really wasn't how he wanted to die.

He decided to wait before trying to move again, but he still couldn't shake his fear about throwing up, so he managed to turn his head just a little to the side as he laid there. This in turn made it easier to peel open one eye, and eventually he thought he might be steady enough to try getting up again.

He had marginally more luck this time, and eventually he found himself leaning heavily against the sofa that smelled too much like Frank, trying to calm the raging storm that was rocking his house back and forth like a ship on the ocean. He wasn't sure how long it took him to stumble and crawl and groan his way through the house and up the stairs to the safety of his own room. He knew only that when he got there, it was getting far too difficult to breathe and the lights he saw flickering in his field of vision couldn't possibly be healthy.

_Hospital,_ his mind provided urgently, _get to the hospital. You have to. _

But he couldn't. He knew he couldn't. There was too much hidden on his body, and not just the hellish reminder of all that Tarsus IV had done to him. Some days, he wished the new scars had covered the old ones. If they had whipped him just there; if they'd dragged him screaming and thrashing through the hot, abrasive sand at just that angle... _then_ he could erase his self-inflicted hell with another, several times as horrific but more understandable to the average person.

No-one would understand the cuts. The evenly-spaced rows that marched up and down his arms and legs like little soldiers, bearing silent witness to pain he'd never once voiced. It leaked out from his soul to his skin, a testament to the fact that despite all notions to the contrary, James Tiberius Kirk was still human and still _felt_ _everything_. Even if no-one could see it.

It had gotten worse since he'd returned.

Jim patched himself up in the dirty bathroom mirror that night and took a handful of over-the-counter aspirin that helped exactly not at all, and realized that it could have ended so much worse. If Frank had been a little angrier, a little less drunk, a little more precise... Jim might be drowning in his own blood on that smelly carpet downstairs. And he wouldn't have called the police or gone to the hospital even if he could have, because of what it would have revealed to ignorant strangers.

He knew now that there would be no healing for him, now or ever.

Jim's scars had cost him this.

_**(Two)**_

Her name was Alice.

Jim usually didn't keep track of their names; the girls he went home with for a couple of hours and left before morning. Usually, he didn't care.

But he remembered _her_ name. He remembered it because she tore open a wound he thought was long healed. And the ironic part was that she didn't even know it.

It had been one of those nights when everything seemed to be driving into his back at once. Old memories were jumping out to say 'boo' from behind every corner, it seemed, and every offhanded remark from a stranger was picking at old scabs. He was feeling irritable and desperate and exhausted and he just wanted some peace and quiet, really. He should have known it wouldn't end when he left the bar.

Alice was a shapely blond straight off the pages of a magazine. It was clear she didn't come from Riverside. No-one in Riverside looked like that. She had legs all the way up to there and a face that almost made it easy to ignore her chest, which she clearly wasn't worried about hiding. Her breasts were practically falling out of her dress, for christsakes. You only walked into a bar looking like that for one reason, and Jim Kirk did not disappoint. He had no idea what anyone else in the bar said or did after he spotted her walk in, and he only had to buy her a couple of drinks before she was batting dark eyelashes at him and suggesting they head someplace a little more quiet.

She didn't need to spell it out, and Jim was slipping on his coat before she had finished her sentence.

They burst through the front door of her apartment in a tangle of limbs and heated breath, lips and teeth and hands roaming to indecent places. He wasn't sure if it was a bed or a couch that they collapsed onto, only that it was soft and it made her squeal when he landed on top of her, arms locked to keep from putting too much weight on her slender frame. He grinned against her neck, pleasantly buzzed and more than willing to lose himself in passion for a few hours.

He helpfully lifted one arm at a time and let her strip off his shirt, lavishing attention on her neck and ears as she squirmed against him. There was nothing slow or romantic about this—neither of them had any misconceptions about the purpose of this rendezvous. They just wanted to forget something, and in that, they were perfect for each other.

But then again, no-one had ever accused Jim Kirk of being perfect, and it was unlikely that they ever would.

"What are these?"

Jim didn't like the tone to her voice, nor the fact that she was speaking at all, and he pulled back in disappointment to figure out what she was talking about. He glanced down at the slender hand that danced across his arms and realized that even in the dim streetlight coming through the blinds, his familiar wounds stood out like freakin' glowsticks.

Talk about a boner killer.

"Old scars." He huffed dismissively, too buzzed and aroused to dance around the subject. "Come on, don't worry about—"

"You cut yourself?" She sounded so incredulous, so disgusted and judgmental, like she couldn't imagine anything more despicable.

"It was years ago, princess," he answered in an equally cold tone, glaring a warning at her. "Can we not talk about it? Jesus, now you're gonna have to get me going again—"

She pushed him backwards and he was already off-balance, so the unexpected move had him stumbling awkwardly up off the mattress to keep from landing on his ass on the floor. He stared at her in surprise.

"What the hell?" He was irritated now, and he definitely didn't understand.

"I've changed my mind," she was saying, her legs crossed like she was somehow ladylike enough for that to be a concern as she tucked her lacy bra back into her dress. Jim didn't even remember how that much of her clothing had come off, and he didn't care, now.

"Why?" His voice was quiet and still, because if he was really honest, he _knew_ why.

"I just don't think this is a good idea," she continued preening, though for the life of him he couldn't figure out why. Did she think she was going to head back to the bar and try for a bigger fish?

Jim was silent.

"I think you should leave," she nodded pointedly towards the door, and made no move to show him out.

Jim left.

As he walked home in the cold, he clasped the fingers of his right hand over his left arm so hard that it hurt, fighting the urge to rake his fingernails down those cursed marks and reopen them; rediscover the rush of a pain that he was actually, truly in control of. It had been months since he'd been driven that far; months since he'd turned eighteen and packed his bags and followed Sam's example all too late, leaving that hellhole of a farm behind him without so much as a glance back.

Whatever he'd been looking for, he hadn't found it. He hadn't found love, or even real acceptance or pleasure.

Who knows if he would have found any of that with Alice, anyway? It wasn't likely, but he would have liked the chance to find out that he would never have now.

His scars had cost him that chance.

_**(One)**_

Jim was nineteen when he finally saw a way out.

He was working at a motorcycle parts factory, a mundane line operation job that left him dead on his feet for twelve hours a day. But sleep wasn't all that necessary or even appealing most nights, so the job still left his evening hours free for bar-hopping and getting into trouble, a pastime that had not concluded with his graduation from school.

An Army recruiter walked into the break room at ten o' fucking clock on a Tuesday morning, and everyone had raised an eyebrow and paused between sips of burnt, lukewarm coffee.

Everyone except Jim.

He watched quietly, blue eyes going dark with thought as he watched the recruiter talk to a couple of the younger guys, answering questions vaguely and optimistically and handing out little fliers and magnets and shit with every other sentence. The guy had a good racket going, at least.

Jim didn't make up his mind until his break was ten minutes past over and the recruiter was walking out the door. He shot up and followed, catching him in the empty hallway, away from listening ears and just far enough away from the roar of machinery to keep the conversation legible. It was a fairly short conversation. Jim had specific questions, and the military man had specific answers.

Half-an-hour later, Jim Kirk turned in his stupid little plastic ID badge and jumped on his bike, the new and entirely unfamiliar surge of hope running like an electrical current through his chest translating into breakneck speeds and a half-dozen traffic violations the cops were too slow to catch him on. For the first time in his life, he felt like he had a chance.

It didn't last.

The next day, he packed his bags and gave his thirty days at that shit-hole of an apartment he'd been shacking up in, and made a will and paid his last bar tab and... and he did it. He traipsed into a recruiting center two hundred miles from Riverside and dropped his duffel and his helmet on the floor. He signed his name and walked in for his physical.

He hadn't even thought about it. He wasn't sure why. It just seemed like those stupid little scars wouldn't make a difference here, when he was signing up to basically throw his meat-suit away at the first possible opportunity, anyway.

But he knew when he stripped down to his boxers and stood as tall and as proud as he could in that sterile white environment that made him want to panic and puke and hyperventilate because _god it was all white_; he knew when he saw that same familiar look on the doctor's face; he knew when the nurse answered some unspoken request and came in with a plain, yellow, paper file... he knew he was fucked.

The doctor wasn't interested in the road map of scars left by his time on a dying world, souvenirs of surviving one of the most horrifying dictators the universe had ever seen. The balding man with his thick glasses and long nose was looking at those other marks. The ones that he couldn't erase.

Funny how small that made him feel.

He knew what was in that file, and he knew it was a key that didn't coincide with the physical marks on display for the world to see. He knew the doctor was comparing notes, scratching away on that stupid PADD the short little letters that would effectively crush Jim's hopes and dreams because of a few bad choices as a kid.

By the time he'd been told in clinical, detached medical jargon and professional little buzzwords that he was disqualified from enlistment on grounds of psychological instability, he was ready to scream in their faces. Why couldn't they just say it? James Kirk was a failure; a screw-up, a nut-job. He wasn't fit to wear a uniform. James Kirk was not his father. James Kirk was 'psychologically unstable.'

The military was supposed to be an escape. A ticket to freedom. A new life.

Jim's scars cost him that.

_**(+ One)**_

Bones was his sun, now.

Leonard McCoy was the new center of Jim's universe, a brighter beacon than he'd ever been able to provide for himself and twice as steady. Bones was everything Jim was not. He was reliable and resilient and _safe. _He was his best friend.

Leonard had his troubles, that was for sure. And Jim was always there to listen and joke if he needed to and sit quietly instead if he needed to do that, but they were so normal that it was like breathing in true air instead of ashy haze to hear of them. Midterms, a grouchy ex-wife, and bouts of reluctant but always temporary abstinence from liquor were all so new and contained and completely manageable. Jim never mentioned this perspective, of course. Bones might think he was even crazier.

In fact, all this normalcy was what had stood between them. When it should have been pulling them closer together, it held them apart. Jim's planet was perfectly aligned around McCoy's, so far as he was concerned. To upset the balance was to change the orbit. It would change _them._

Leonard didn't share this point of view.

Like every truly good thing in Jim's life, this all changed when Leonard saw his scars.

"Kid, sit down before you fall down."

"M'fine, Bones." But Jim sat anyway, sliding into a desk in their Astrophysics auditorium and burying his eyes in his forearms. It was a complete lie, but Jim was feeling far too shitty to offer anything more than the automatic words.

"You're not fine, damn it." Anyone else would have missed the gentle tone in the doctor's voice as he slid in next to his friend, sliding a blessedly cool hand around the back of his neck. "C'mon, Jim. Let me help you back to the dorm."

"Can't miss class." Jim answered mechanically, though honestly the idea of holing up in their dark, shared dorm and sleeping away the next several days sounded like heaven.

"They'll live without you. Hell, they'll dance in the streets."

Jim wanted to make a smart remark about that, some kind of a witty comeback, but for the life of him he couldn't form a coherent thought, let alone actual words.

Testament to the severity of his migraine, a headache that had spent the last several days snowballing into the monstrosity it had become, Jim wasn't even aware that he was standing until he tripped over a step. Leonard's strong arm around his waist held him upright, and Jim had the insane urge to cry. But that was probably just the blinding pain talking.

Something about the fact that someone was here for him like this and didn't even care... well, it slipped past every defense he had and buried itself like a death blow deep in his heart.

Damn Bones.

The trip seemed short and at the same time, agonizingly long, but eventually McCoy was lowering Jim onto his own bed and darting across the room to close the blinds.

"You're an angel," Jim was murmuring, half-delirious, "a freakin' angel. I swear to god, you are..."

"Maybe I need to get you sick more often," Leonard's voice was quiet and soothing past the familiar clink of a hypospray being prepared. "You're pretty damn flattering when you're like this."

"Fuck off."

"Well. Never mind what I said earlier."

Jim was startled by his own voice as he groaned quietly, nausea welling up in his gut like a bubble about to burst.

Leonard's answer was the soft hiss of a hypospray to the neck, and Jim only felt that spike of panic for a moment because this was Bones, and if his best friend knew anything it was exactly what medications Jim was allergic to. And because it was Jim they were talking about, that was a pretty hefty list.

As much as Jim hated being medicated, he couldn't completely contain the sigh of relief that broke past his lips as the horrific, throbbing vie released his skull just a fraction and he could finally bear to peel his eyes open without imminent danger of vomiting.

He wished he hadn't opened his eyes, because when he did, he realized two things in quick succession.

First of all, his long-sleeved, red uniform shirt was no longer glued protectively to his skin. He couldn't remember the doctor removing it, but he must have only recently because his skin was still warm.

Secondly, Bones was looking at him. Just looking, eyes to tired eyes.

Jim froze.

"Jim?"

"Yeah?" The cadet managed to choke back.

Jim should have been relieved that it sounded just as hard for his best friend to ask. "What happened to your arms?" Something in his tone sounded like dread, like he was begging Jim not to confirm all of his worst suspicions.

Jim's eyes dragged downwards to the familiar rows of thin white lines, like a barcode across his skin. The lines disappeared up into the sleeve of the thinner black shirt he'd worn beneath his uniform, and he knew more danced across his ribs and hips and down his legs. He knew every one of those scars; close and intimate like old friends.

But he couldn't really focus on them, because Leonard's words and brought his mind stuttering to a complete halt.

_What happened?_

The truth was that no-one had ever asked him that before. All the people who had ever seen had answered his visible pain with disgust and anger and repulsion.

Not Bones.

The older man was staring down at him with such concern and fear that it was almost unreal, like something you've spent so long dreaming about that you can't quite believe it when it actually happens. Jim hadn't even realized until that exact moment that he'd maybe always been waiting for someone to ask, for someone to simply _care_ that he was alive, and that he was human and that sometimes he hurt so much he couldn't breathe.

McCoy saw every one of these thoughts pass through his best friend's eyes; understood every one as clearly as if they had been written out on paper for him to read. Something in his eyes changed and his face softened, and suddenly he was on his knees next to Jim. Careful not to jostle the younger man's throbbing head, the doctor pulled Jim bodily into his arms.

Jim didn't resist. There was desperate strength to the embrace that warned him: Leonard needed this just as much as Jim, if not more. It hurt the doctor that Jim had done this to himself, and that was a revelation so flooring that it kept Jim where he was, walls down, heart open. More vulnerable in that quiet moment than he had ever been in his life.

He was crying. Large, silent tears that passed across his skin like ships in the night. He hoped the hug would last long enough for the doctor to miss them.

He didn't have that kind of luck.

As if operating on some kind of sixth sense, because Jim _knew_ he hadn't made a single sound, the doctor pulled back. His face changed again when he saw the silent tears, but it didn't keep an encouraging smile from peeking out.

"It's okay to hurt." McCoy said simply, and damned if that wasn't what James Kirk had been waiting twenty-two years to hear.

He'd lost everything—his home, his family, his dreams. But it didn't matter, because he'd gained something more valuable.

He had Bones. He had this beautiful, bright aura of warmth and solid mass and sheer stubborn will in his atmosphere. He had hope. He had a true friend.

Jim's scars had given him that.

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	2. Author's Note

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Scars

_by DeepBlueSomewhere_

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**Author's Note**

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First of all, an update on _Perfect Strangers_: Coming soon! Vague I know, but we're coming down the homestretch on that one. Maybe two more chapters? I'll be finishing it soonish, I swear.

One-Shots: This one kind of came out of the blue, but the other two I promised you are still very much in the works. One is almost done, actually, and I'll give you a hint: It's actually _much_ longer than a one-shot.

Moving on. 

I usually don't do these five-and-one's, but this one just kind of wrote itself, honestly. I've been going through a lot emotionally lately, and writing some of it out even indirectly proved quite cathartic.

I will try to explain.

I wrote in an update on _Perfect Strangers_ that I was going to be joining the United States Military; the Coast Guard, specifically. I thought you all deserved an update on that front, considering how patient you've all been and how many of you rejoiced with me when I shared this news (which was extremely touching, by the way).

I spoke with my recruiter recently and finally addressed the concern which has been most pressing to my mind.

I have scars.

I have scars for the same reasons that Jim has scars, though obviously I had neither a heroic Captain for a father, nor an abusive stepfather.

I had instead an abusive _grandfather_, and an extremely oblivious family. I was under the impression when I was quite young that I was protecting them. More than ten years later, I'm still paying for things I didn't understand, and I have a mess of scars to show for it. Scars that are permanent and unsettling and so obviously intentional.

As it turns out, these same scars—the ones that have driven me so hard and so far to protect others—may keep me from doing just that.

If I decide to continue in this career path, a decision that is currently on hold while I wrestle with my own fears and cowardice, I will have to undergo intense psychiatric screening and will be closely examined on a deeply emotional level. Considering this is territory into which I do not venture with even my closest friends, the prospect is horrifying. The results of the psychological profiling may disqualify me from military service forever, and my self-confidence is already fragile enough without an official stamp of judgment on it. So I'm still chewing on that, and you will be the first to know if and when I do take the plunge. Even if I go ahead with it, nothing will actually happen for perhaps six months to a year, so... we'll see.

The long and the short of it is that I have no idea what is happening from here on out. I also have no idea why I felt the need to share all of that, except to explain what was going through my mind as I wrote this story.

Then again, maybe I do know why I felt the need.

The point is, no-one is alone. No matter how horrible you feel, or how depressed you are, or how difficult life may seem at the moment. There is someone out there who has gone through it and _lived_, and to me, that is what scars are. Proof that you survived.

If anyone out there has ever struggled with self-harm, abuse, depression, or thoughts of suicide, I invite you to write to me. I can NOT fix your problems. I CAN offer you a shoulder to cry on and an ear to listen, and a very real expression of sympathy and love for you. I never had those things growing up. Much like Jim, I was completely alone, with nowhere to turn and no-one to talk to. To this day, no-one ever knew what was happening to me. I can't stomach the thought of any of you feeling that way when I am just a click or two away from you and willing to listen. Maybe that's too much to ask for you to actually get in contact, but if you're reading this at all, maybe with no intention to write or respond, and it means something: then I will feel more than satisfied.

I love you all, even though I don't really know you. That means _you are loved_, and love is the fuel that gets you through those long nights and dangerous temptations when the negativity and pain is all you can hear.

So please stay strong, because you are not alone.

I'll be done now. Thank you again for reading, and encouraging me through your support and presence; simply by reading. It means more than you know.


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